For the first time in his professional life, Derek Jeter today will be the Yankees’ opponent.
Barring a last-minute meeting of the wallets, Jeter and the Yankees will be foes in a Tampa hearing room this morning to argue before three arbitrators whether the star shortstop receives $5 million (his asking price) or $3.2 million (the team’s offer).
In this version of Casey at the Bat, Jeter will be represented by his agent, Casey Close, and the Yankees by Frank Casey, a lawyer hired for these occasions. Will there be joy in Yankeeville when it is all over?
That appears the first major question of a Yankee spring-training camp that opens this week just 10 minutes from the hearing room. Players and teams always talk about how they will not let these matters become personnel. Yet, almost inevitably, they do.
Teams are annoyed with what they see as players asking too much and refusing settlement offers, a combination that grows worse should the player win (as Bernie Williams did for $3 million in 1996 to add a piece of bitter history in the relationship between the Yankees and the center fielder).
The players’ anger is most often heightened in the hearing room, where the club criticizes its own property to try and win the case. Indians GM John Hart found that part of the process so potentially destructive that he made avoiding arbitration a cornerstone of his organization’s rebirth, and Cleveland has not had a case since 1991.
“I can’t worry at this point,” Yankee GM Brian Cashman said yesterday when asked about the potential damage of a hearing. “It is business and part of our job. Certainly, I would like to never have a hearing ever for any player. But I think both sides are man enough to see that if we can’t agree on value, then this is the system set up to determine that.”
So how do the Yankees play this hand? They want to win. But at what price? Do they, for example, make a big deal over Jeter’s penchant for striking out (346 times over the past three seasons) and risk his hostility?
And what does Jeter remember most about this day? The stings of the Yankees by day as his 1999 salary is determined or the bonhomie of the evening, when he will join many of his teammates in New York as they are toasted for their 1998 accomplishments at the ESPY ceremonies.
En route to a championship last season, the Yankees were known for their clubhouse contentment. Jeter was a key component in the atmosphere. He has said that if he wins or losses the arbitration, he will be making plenty of money and that financial matters will not impact his preparation or play in anyway in 1999. We’ll see.
Both sides also brace for this moment knowing the scorecard to date. Of the five arbitration cases ruled on so far, the teams have won them all. Does that make Jeter reconsider the Yankees’ last compromise offer of $3.5 million with the promise to revisit multi-year discussions? Does it make the Yankees flinch, worried that the law of averages catches them and makes them face the wrath of George Steinbrenner for a costly February defeat?
“There is still time between now and the hearing to get something done,” Cashman said 15 hours before the proceedings. “But not much.”